The Mysterious Code

made. The gay, flowered patterns and
bright colors made a lovely picture.
    Back of the aprons,
and above them, so they were in plain view, the stuffed elephants, kittens,
dogs, tigers, and bears ranged in patterned calico. Beside them, the dolls sat
primly, their kapok-stuffed toes hanging over the edge of the shelf.
    “We’ll have to put
the price tags on these later,” Honey said. “Here they are.” She took a handful
of white paper squares from her pocket and put them on the shelf. “It won’t
take long.”
    “I'm getting so
excited,” Trixie said as she stood off to look at the other girls’ work. “The
room looks simply gorgeous!”
    “It does!” Mr.
Belden said as he stepped through the door, followed by three sturdy little
boys, their hands full of handbills. “I never guessed you had done so much work
on this show.” Mr. Belden put his arm proudly around Trixie’s shoulders and
beamed at the others.
    “I kept trying to
tell you what it would be like, Daddy,” Trixie said, her eyes shining. “Did you
have fun?” she asked the little boys, who stood with big eyes in front of the
toy shelves staring at the array of colorful animals.
    “Yes, we did,
Trixie,” Bobby said. “We put the bills on people’s letter boxes, didn’t we,
Daddy?”
    “They did,” Mr.
Belden said. “They worked like little beavers. They didn’t miss a house.”
    “We worked so hard
were tired,” Larry and Terry said. “We want to eat.”
    Trixie sighed. “I
guess we all want to eat,” she said. “What time is it, Daddy?”
    “Almost twelve
o’clock,” her father answered. “If we hurry over to Wimpy’s, we can get in
before the crowd comes.”
    “We’ll be the
crowd,” Mart said. “I’m starved. We’ll fill all the seats at Wimpy’s.”
    “Wait till we wash
our hands,” Trixie called. “Come on Celia, Tom, Regan, Mrs. Bruger, Bob-Whites.
How about you?” she called around the screen to the Hakaito brothers.
    “We stay here,” they
announced. “We finish work first”
    “I’ll stay, too,”
Celia said. “I wouldn’t go anyplace in this old work uniform!”
    “I’ll stay, too,
with Celia,” Tom said. “Bring something back for us, Trixie.”
    Mrs. Bruger, the
cleaning woman, refused to go, too, so the rest of them trooped out.
    Trixie was glad the
showroom wouldn’t be deserted. There were so many valuable antiques there.
    “I haven’t seen a
sign of one of Sergeant Molinson’s men all day,” she said.
    “What would a
policeman be doing around today?” Mart asked. “With all of us there? The
sergeant,” he added airily to his father, “seems unaccountably unable to
appreciate the quality of my beloved sibling’s flatfooting.”
    “Whoops! There goes
my appetite!” Trixie shouted. “Ask him to define the words, Daddy. I know he
doesn’t know what they mean. What are you going to order, Bobby?”
    “Hamburger!” Bobby
shouted. “Me and Larry and Terry want hamburgers.”
    “The same thing all
around,” Mr. Belden said. “Right, kids?”
    Terry and Larry
created a scene when their orders came. “Take mine back!” Terry shouted. “It’s
no good. I want one like I had last night”
    “Me, too,” Larry
echoed.
    “Who made ’em?”
Mike, the counterman, asked, bewildered.
    “My moms!” Bobby
cried, laughing and beating on the counter. “And hers are the goodest” he said,
filling his mouth.
    “Maybe we could get
her to work here,” Mike said sarcastically. “Take ’em or leave ’em, kids.
People are lined up back of you waitin’ for ’em.”
    “It takes the kids
to tell them, doesn’t it?” Jim asked on the way back to the showroom. “We
aren’t going to be very popular with Mike for a while.”
    “It’s all in a day’s
work to him,” Brian said.
    “Our day’s work is far
from done,” Trixie said.
    “I'll walk over to
the car with Daddy and the boys if you’ll take the food back to Tom and Celia
and Mrs. Bruger. They must be starved.”
    “I ordered some
extra for the Hakaito brothers,” her father said. “Come on, boys!” He and
Trixie herded the little boys ahead of them into the car.
    “Oh, by the way,”
her father said. “I forgot and left this copy of the Sleepyside Sun in
the car. I was going to give it to you. There’s a half-page spread about the
show.”
    “An’ pictures of the
jewel box,” Bobby added, “an Mrs. Vanderpoel’s silver, an’—”
    “All right, Bobby,
let’s go,” his father said. “Trixie will